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Aircons

The undisputed king of energy guzzlers in the home is the airconditioner. A huge amount of electricity is consumed to compress the aircon's cooling gases to very cold temperatures and then circulating it through pipes into your room's aircon units. It's a luxury we can enjoy and appreciate in balmy Singapore, but spare a thought to the ecological cost involved.

There are alternatives to cooling your room. The simplest is just opening your window and letting the breeze in. This is also the healthiest as it takes away accumulated dust and fills your room wiht fresh air. The other is to use fans. These are inexpensive to buy and to use.

When you're looking to buy an aircon do take these into consideration:

The size and type of room you're wanting to cool down

The number of ticks on the energy efficiency label: the more the better.

The cost of running it for the entire life of the airconditioner. A cheaper model may be easier to buy upfront but the running costs may be considerably more than an eco model.

Tips on using an aircon

If you must use airconditioning when you sleep, consider running the aircon an hour before you sleep and then switching to a fan just before you doze off.

Some airconditioners come with a timer on the remote control to automatically shut it down after a while.

You don't need to set the aircon temperature to 16 degrees C to be cool! Setting it to 25 degrees C will still give the cooling you want and doesn't overwork the aircon compressor. As a rule of thumb every degree of cooling can increase your electricity bill by 10%.

You should clean your aircon filter at least once a week. The more stuff that gets trapped in the aircon filter makes it more difficult for the fan to suck in air to cool the room, so it ends up using more electricity to overcome it.

Service your aircon once every 3 months with a professional aircon cleaning company. To keep working in tip-top condition you'll need to do regular maintenance.